The Selective Hearing team has been immersed in various games this month as fellow gamers. We’re excited to share our personal gaming experiences with you in this monthly series of articles.
Allen
What Have You Been Playing in October 2024?
- Metaphor Refantazio (Beta and Game)
- Monster Hunter Wilds Beta
- Pokemon Trading Card Pocket Mobile
What Are Your Thoughts
SPOILERS AHEAD
I went ahead and got the demo for Metaphor Refantazio. Many people had positive things to say, mainly that it was a beefy demo and you could get a nice appetizer for the main game. Visually, I had issues with the UI. It was very stylized but also hectic. Something was always moving, and it was hard for me to focus. Even at some points, I had headaches.
The menus look cool, in ATLUS fashion, but they did feel extra. Even the UI in the battles just felt overproduced, with whips and transitions all over the place. Out on the main field, when you are dashing around, they add motion blur and have these dumb dash lines. It was so off-putting, they had to put out a patch to turn it off. The messy framerates mess me up, too. I wish I couldn’t see it, but it is so apparent. I hope they patch things to make it smoother.
Ultimately, I decided to buy the game as I could get used to the visual problems. The combat system is very cool, and I’m sure the story will keep me on Metaphor. This will probably be my main game for the next few months.
Capcom put out the Monster Hunter Wilds Beta, and the ones on PlayStation got to play early. The demo was cool; you can see how much more they are trying to add as far as the story goes.
I’m mainly a bow user, and they beefed them up. They are so much fun. All the weapons have much more sauce to work with. The main demo was over in less than an hour, but they let you mess around in the first area to take on some hunts. Everything looks to be upgraded, and I’m excited to jump in when the game gets its full release.
The new Pokemon Pocket TCG also came out, and everyone I know is jumping in. Opening the packs and pulling rare cards are my main reasons for playing. I don’t play games on my phone, but I can play this a couple of times a day.
What Are You Looking Forward to in November?
I’ll play Metaphor Refantazio for most of the month and then Dragon Quest III HD2D once I’m done. Also, I have a Playstation 5 Pro coming in, and I need all the rays traced.
Greg
What Have You Been Playing in October 2024?
- NHL 25
- Pokemon TCG Pocket
What Are Your Thoughts?
After skipping NHL 24, I returned to the series. Fundamentally, many EA NHL games are the same, with minuscule tweaks and features added to keep things fresh. I found the gameplay to be much slower and simulation-like for this year’s edition compared to the arcade mode feel of NHL 23.
Although I’ve only had the game for a short time, I welcome this change of pace. It’s nice to set up a proper breakout and learn how to defend rushes properly.
When I play the EA NHL games, I stick to the single-player modes such as Franchise and rarely go online except for HUT, which usually requires an online connection to download rosters and opponents to play.
Of course, it’s pay-to-play, so if you do not want to grind it out and spend actual money on micro-transactions, you can significantly improve your HUT team quickly. Since I’m a dirty casual player, I see the need to go to such lengths later.
I don’t go online head-to-head anymore because I find it to be an incredibly frustrating experience since people are looking to dunk on you endlessly rather than try to play competitively. It’s way different than the fighting game experience where you can casually jump into an online match and have a chance at least getting some back-and-forth action and learning a few things instead of getting wholly owned in the first 5 minutes of action.
I have never played a mainline Pokemon game on any Nintendo system or collected any physical Pokemon cards. I know of the anime but have never finished the series or watched the movies.
I just like the cute, non-evolved versions of Pokemon and collect the plushies when I go to Japan. My knowledge of the Pokemon universe could improve compared to the others on Selective Hearing.
However, that all changed when my oldest nephew started getting really into Pokemon. Because I wanted to make sure I had some shared interests with him, I had to dive into the deep end of the Pokemon pool and learn about them quickly.
That is where a game like Pokemon TCG Pocket is a godsend. For a novice like me, it eases me into the Pokemon world and the card game. Granted, in October, the mobile game was still fresh out of the box, so everyone was on a level playing field for the most part. Next month, I’ll share my experience with the game. But so far, it’s been a learning experience.
What Are You Looking Forward to in November?
More Pokemon TCG Pocket and maybe finishing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I’m still looking for the time to grind out the final boss fights.
BigFreaky
What Have You Been Playing in October 2024?
- Pokémon TCG Pocket
- Pokémon GO (as usual)
What Are Your Thoughts?
Well, you knew I was going to be there the minute it launched. Although October 30th was the launch date, it came out a few hours early! I downloaded it the minute I saw it was available.
Since we only had a few days before the end of the month, I only got to play a little bit. I am still learning and opening packs. I will definitely share some of my better cards in the coming months.
So far, this game seems pretty easy to pick up and play a little bit. But it can also be complex and challenging if you need the right cards to battle someone else. For now, I’ll just be collecting and doing some simple battles. I’ll never really try to be competitive. I’ll leave that for my gamers here.
Pokémon GO continued with Max Battles, but they have upgraded some of them to Gigantamax Battles this time. These were MUCH MORE difficult. With these battles, you could have up to 40 trainers work together. Much more strategy, patience, and luck were needed for these. After reading reports online about the difficulty and trying to express that to my local group, they decided they would “try it anyways.”… needless to say, everyone’s level 15 grookey would not cut it.
We had roughly 25 trainers to battle the GMax Pokémon of Blastoise, Venusaur, and Charizard. After many people spent their stardust and candy to power up a few of their Dynamax PKMN, we finally stood a chance. But they still weren’t easy. In the end, we managed to defeat 2 of each GMax PKMN. Which only helps everyone’s chances in the future with other GMax battles. This is a reasonably exciting feature that spices up the game. It will be interesting to see how these battles progress going forward.
What Are You Looking Forward to in November?
More play time on Pokemon TCG Pocket
Pokemon GO will have its first “Wild Area” event, which seems to be a way to handle quarterly events outside of GO Fest (summer), Regional GO Tours (Late Winter), and possible future events. The event will be in the “real life” locations of Fukuoka, Japan, along with a global “play where you are” version a week later. This event will be the release of Toxtricity (and its Gigantamax form).
I’ve also partially set up my retro gaming area and will share photos and reports next month!
